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Latvia is assigned a high score on the Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index

The Basel Institute of Governance has put Latvia in the 14th place on its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Index. Within the one-year timeframe, Latvia has improved its positions on the Index by 14 places.

The Basel Institute of Governance measures the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing of countries. The Index mainly addresses the elements of the overall AML/CFT framework and other related factors such as financial transparency and judicial strength.

This year, the experts assigned the highest score to Finland. For the last four years, Finland remained the lowest risk country in the Basel AML Index. Lithuania and Estonia managed to keep their positions from 2016, holding the second and the third positions. Iran and Afghanistan, with their money laundering risks and high rates of perceived corruption, are the high-risk countries in the 2017 Basel AML Index.

The Basel AML Index is a composite index, which entails that the overall score is a weighted average of 14 indicators. The Basel Institute does not generate its own data but relies on data from various publicly available sources such as the FATF, the Financial Secrecy Index, Transparency International, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and other data. The indicators are grouped into the following five categories: money laundering and terrorist financing risk; corruption risk; financial transparency & standards; public transparency & accountability; and political risk.